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Saturday, April 09, 2016

The BPI is involved in a scheme called Get It Right From A Genuine Site. It's well meaning, kind of like a Sunday School teacher getting you to colour in pictures of Jesus holding a lamb and believing that this will stop you from becoming a bad person when you grow up. It's not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just it's so disconnected from how the world works.

Reg sits in front of his computer, about to torrent a dodgy Taylor Swift album.

"Hold on" thinks Reg, "before I do that, I should check the BPI's Get It Right From A Genuine Site site, just to check it is okay."

What if someone started a site at getitrightfromagenuinesite.com? And they could fill that site up with things that aren't genuine at all. And the people of the UK, who have come to trust getitrightfromagenuinesite.org wouldn't realise, and MUSIC AS WE KNOW IT WOULD CEASE TO EXIST.

UK music group BPI owns the GetitRightFromaGenuineSite.org domain but to be doubly sure there are no imposters the group has also bagged at least 17 others, including the .audio, .band, .biz, .com, .digital, .email, .foundation and .net variants.

But what, worried the BPI, if people decided to try and parody our lovely campaign? What then?

And so, they fired up the registration site again:

TF discovered these domains while trawling through WHOIS records this week but it was more of a surprise to see that the BPI had also grabbed a bunch of ‘pirate’ versions too. As can be seen below, the BPI has secured the opportunity for people to GetitRightFromaPirateSite too.

Now, you could say there's wisdom in buying up a domain name that could work against you, but this is a pretty specific wording.

At time of writing, these domains are still available:

getitrightfromagenuine.site
getitrightfromagenuinesite.uk.com
pirateitrightfromagenuinesite.com (and all other variants)
getitrightfromatorrentsite.com (and all other variants)
getitfreefromagenuinesite.com (and all other variants)
getitrightfromaginuwinesite.com

You get the idea.

What makes this slightly less funny is that you're paying for this - despite the BPI being a cartel run by some of the largest businesses on the planet, the getitrightfromagenuinesite cybersplurge and the related activity is being paid for by the government.

Additional fun fact - you can still register a domain under the name BritishPornographicIndustry.